


cellar door

by IrisParry



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6053512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hour is late and Hux’s mind is already straying to the bottle of Whyren’s Reserve in the cabinet when he feels it again, Ren’s curious, aimless prodding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cellar door

The hour is late and Hux’s mind is already straying to the bottle of Whyren’s Reserve in the cabinet when he feels it again, Ren’s curious, aimless prodding. It never feels like he’d thought it might. Ren isn’t sorting through methodically, holding up thoughts or memories to the light for examination. The intrusion seems an end in itself, and the vulgar application of what could be a sublime power is so characteristic of him that Hux can’t help but roll his eyes, alone in his quarters. He likes to think that Ren can tell, though. 

He stands and stretches, clasping his hands behind his back and pushing away to ease his shoulders. Hux has been reviewing the plans for the containment field for several hours now, alternately leaning close to the schematics spread across his desk or pacing his quarters, going over R&D’s initial reports and the subsequent experimental findings. His mind is buzzing, and Ren is welcome to it all. He probably won’t enjoy it.

Hux _has_ enjoyed it, and Ren’s pettiness won’t sour the satisfaction of seeing the process finally take shape in his mind, pieces in place, flowing and complete. It will work, he is sure of it now, and it will be considerably more efficient than a static oscillator. He’ll give the nod officially tomorrow, though the deliciously precise formal wording of the orders is already half-composed in his head. Ren lingers there, too, perceptible like thin-spread smoke, a shadow around the parts of Hux’s mind that his work has lit up. He still doesn’t seem to particularly _want_ anything, or Hux supposes he would find himself screaming like the prisoners. As it is, Ren feels like a mild annoyance, an itch he can’t scratch.

The hum of jubilant adrenaline somehow intensifies Hux’s exhaustion now, mind and body so much more awake to what they feel, like he’s taken a good beating. He doesn’t look quite as worked over as he feels, glancing at himself in the mirror as he splashes water on his face: he’s in his shirtsleeves, rolled up past his elbows, and he has run his hands back through his hair so often that it’s falling across his face. When he reaches up to push it back with damp fingers, he sees the smudges of ink on the skin of his hands. He could have dictated his notes, mostly does, but sometimes the simple physicality of doing things the old-fashioned way brings a new focus, is almost a pleasure in itself. The significance of this task had seemed to warrant it; like its completion warrants the whiskey. 

It’s not the best batch of the old Reserve, but it’s a rare enough commodity in the Unknown Regions. Wine is easy to acquire but the Glovan swill usually served up at the tables of First Order officers does little for Hux, other than to make him nostalgic for his family’s cellar. His father must have stashed a selection of the bottles in the shuttle when they left the old house. 

Hux barely remembers the place now, save for fragments in dreams: but he can recall with perfect clarity the taste of the Alderaanian red Brendol Hux had opened on the evening of his son’s graduation, many years later. There would never be another taste like it, not ever, and the knowledge elevated the somewhat pedestrian tartness of the stuff with the complex, elusive flavours of memory and time and loss. Hux remembers touching his fingers to the dust still gathered at the curve of the bottleneck, the dead planet’s last grapes sour on his lips, and feeling a pang of longing, for the house and for the cellar, for the power that was not a distant dream. 

It is not a distant dream. 

It occurs to him, now, looking out into space and letting the whiskey roll slowly across his tongue, what Ren might get out of this. A taste: a unique, cohesive flavour, a blend that would be diminished by a focus on a single note. Memory and time and loss. Ren sips at him like a rare vintage. 

Hux raises his glass to the stars, and drinks to Ren’s hangover. 

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a scene in the middle of another fic, but I don’t think it really fits with the tone of the rest of it, so here it is all alone. Like Hux, who I JUST WANTED to slap Ren around and take him to bed but NO, he insisted he had work to do and then he had to drink alone and think about his dad. There’s no bloody helping the man.
> 
>  
> 
> (Yes, I know it's a silly title. [Fight me.](http://irisparry.tumblr.com))


End file.
